Driving to holiday cottage is this commuting?

shamac

Just seen this on someone elses thread and got me thinking. I travel 80 miles twice a week to do the cleaning on the changeover days at our holiday let-is this regarded as commuting to work? I have always claimed my mileage as an allowable expense-is this wrong?

Pennywise

Depending on the exact circumstances, I think you're OK to claim that on two conditions.

Firstly, that your journeys are wholly for business, i.e. to do the cleaning and maintenance, and that you don't do anything else whilst you're there, such as visiting friends, overnight stay, shopping, theatre or whatever.

Secondly, that your "place of business", i.e. where you actually run the business from is your home. I.e. that you take bookings and do all the admin at home.

The difference comes from the contrast between being an employee and being self employed. Most self employed run their businesses from home (unless they have, say, an office or works) which is where they do their book-keeping, take business calls, do business admin, etc., That's why their "commuting" is allowable, because it's from their permanent workplace (home) to a temporary workplace (client's premises or in your case, cottage).

System

What you have described is business cover and not commuting.

The difference comes from the contrast between being an employee and being self employed. Most self employed run their businesses from home (unless they have, say, an office or works) which is where they do their book-keeping, take business calls, do business admin, etc., That's why their "commuting" is allowable, because it's from their permanent workplace (home) to a temporary workplace (client's premises or in your case, cottage).

Commuting is travel TO your permanent place of work, not starting from your place of work. A self employed person is travelling for business purposes when he goes to a client's site and needs business cover on his insurance.

chrismac1

I advise holiday let clients to claim visits where there is no ancillary purpose, and to let me know of the non-claimed visits. For example I have clients who have ski chalets and many who have holiday homes here in the Lakes but live say in Newcastle area. Visits for turnarounds and to sort out issues such as maintenance contracts, accounts an tax are fine. Skiing weekends with the family when the chalet is not booked, trips to the cottage for the purpose of weekend in the mountains - not claimed but recorded by me as evidence that only business mileage is being claimed. This applies to holiday lets as distinct from non-holiday lets as they are taxed as a business not as property income.

shamac

Great answers, thanks everyone. The cottage is used solely for letting purposes, I travel to it to clean/ change beds once or twice a week and if it is empty we go up and decorate/garden etc then come back home in the evening, last year spent grand total of nil days on holiday there ourselves!